“So, have you expiated your sin?” Eva said. Her familiarity surprised me. “What do you have to say about Arianna?” Arianna wasn’t there in the living room and I told her what I’d seen in the lobby of the theater. “Oh, yes,” she said, “she was with the director of the show. Arianna always has to involve someone else in her own needs.” So she must have told Eva the whole story. Maybe that very morning, after our night together, maybe sitting on the bed, drinking tea and nibbling madeleines. Great! “Do you know Livio Stresa?” she said, grabbing the arm of the bird man, who just then was passing in search of an armrest on which to perch. His name sounded familiar, and it only took me a moment to connect it with a well-known tennis player lately down on his luck. He’d been really good a few years before, even playing in the championship with Pietrangeli, but then he’d stopped competing in the major tournaments. Well, now I knew where he’d ended up.

Arianna came in half an hour later, throwing the door wide open. “To Moscow! To Moscow!” she cried, and judging by the face of the director, who followed her in, it was obvious she’d been parroting that line all the time they’d been together. Her hair was tied back, and she seemed very happy.

“Tell me, Chebutykin,” she said, collapsing tragically into an armchair, “did you love my mother?”

“Tell me, Irina,” Eva now said, approaching her, “who’s that knocking on the floor?”

“It’s Dr. Ivan Romanovich. He’s drunk. What a topsy-turvy night! Have you heard? The regiment is being transferred!”

“Oh, that’s just a rumor!”

“We’ll be left alone. My dear, good sister,” Arianna said, reaching out her arm to Eva, “I have a lot of respect for the baron, he’s an excellent man, I’ll marry him, I consent to it, but, I beg you, let’s go to Moscow! Nothing’s more beautiful than Moscow! To Moscow! To Moscow!”

The director, who was uncomfortable, intervened, saying that she’d mixed up the characters, and the general laughter increased. The writer with the white mustache coughed, as if he’d swallowed part of it, while Arianna and Eva, their eyes sparkling, bathed in their success. They sat down on the same armchair, happy, insolent, and alone.

“Tell me, Arianna,” Eva said, glancing over at me, “is that friend of yours always so serious?”

“It’s just hunger,” she said.

“This time it’s tiredness,” I said.